Gargantua and Pantagruel, by Francois Rabelais

Chapter 3

How Panurge praiseth the debtors and borrowers.

But, quoth Pantagruel, when will you be out of debt? At the next ensuing term of the Greek kalends,
answered Panurge, when all the world shall be content, and that it be your fate to become your own heir. The Lord
forbid that I should be out of debt, as if, indeed, I could not be trusted. Who leaves not some leaven over night, will
hardly have paste the next morning.

Be still indebted to somebody or other, that there may be somebody always to pray for you, that the giver of all
good things may grant unto you a blessed, long, and prosperous life; fearing, if fortune should deal crossly with you,
that it might be his chance to come short of being paid by you, he will always speak good of you in every company, ever
and anon purchase new creditors unto you; to the end, that through their means you may make a shift by borrowing from
Peter to pay Paul, and with other folk’s earth fill up his ditch. When of old, in the region of the Gauls, by the
institution of the Druids, and servants, slaves, and bondmen were burnt quick at the funerals and obsequies of their
lords and masters, had not they fear enough, think you, that their lords and masters should die? For, perforce, they
were to die with them for company. Did not they incessantly send up their supplications to their great god Mercury, as
likewise unto Dis, the father of wealth, to lengthen out their days, and to preserve them long in health? Were not they
very careful to entertain them well, punctually to look unto them, and to attend them faithfully and circumspectly? For
by those means were they to live together at least until the hour of death. Believe me, your creditors with a more
fervent devotion will beseech Almighty God to prolong your life, they being of nothing more afraid than that you should
die; for that they are more concerned for the sleeve than the arm, and love silver better than their own lives. As it
evidently appeareth by the usurers of Landerousse, who not long since hanged themselves because the price of the corn
and wines was fallen by the return of a gracious season. To this Pantagruel answering nothing, Panurge went on in his
discourse, saying, Truly and in good sooth, sir, when I ponder my destiny aright, and think well upon it, you put me
shrewdly to my plunges, and have me at a bay in twitting me with the reproach of my debts and creditors. And yet did I,
in this only respect and consideration of being a debtor, esteem myself worshipful, reverend, and formidable. For
against the opinion of most philosophers, that of nothing ariseth nothing, yet, without having bottomed on so much as
that which is called the First Matter, did I out of nothing become such (a) maker and creator, that I have created —
what? — a gay number of fair and jolly creditors. Nay, creditors, I will maintain it, even to the very fire itself
exclusively, are fair and goodly creatures. Who lendeth nothing is an ugly and wicked creature, and an accursed imp of
the infernal Old Nick. And there is made — what? Debts. A thing most precious and dainty, of great use and antiquity.
Debts, I say, surmounting the number of syllables which may result from the combinations of all the consonants, with
each of the vowels heretofore projected, reckoned, and calculated by the noble Xenocrates. To judge of the perfection
of debtors by the numerosity of their creditors is the readiest way for entering into the mysteries of practical
arithmetic.

You can hardly imagine how glad I am, when every morning I perceive myself environed and surrounded with brigades of
creditors — humble, fawning, and full of their reverences. And whilst I remark that, as I look more favourably upon and
give a cheerfuller countenance to one than to another, the fellow thereupon buildeth a conceit that he shall be the
first despatched and the foremost in the date of payment, and he valueth my smiles at the rate of ready money, it
seemeth unto me that I then act and personate the god of the passion of Saumure, accompanied with his angels and
cherubims.

These are my flatterers, my soothers, my clawbacks, my smoothers, my parasites, my saluters, my givers of
good-morrows, and perpetual orators; which makes me verily think that the supremest height of heroic virtue described
by Hesiod consisteth in being a debtor, wherein I held the first degree in my commencement. Which dignity, though all
human creatures seem to aim at and aspire thereto, few nevertheless, because of the difficulties in the way and
encumbrances of hard passages, are able to reach it, as is easily perceivable by the ardent desire and vehement longing
harboured in the breast of everyone to be still creating more debts and new creditors.

Yet doth it not lie in the power of everyone to be a debtor. To acquire creditors is not at the disposure of each
man’s arbitrament. You nevertheless would deprive me of this sublime felicity. You ask me when I will be out of debt.
Well, to go yet further on, and possibly worse in your conceit, may Saint Bablin, the good saint, snatch me, if I have
not all my lifetime held debt to be as a union or conjunction of the heavens with the earth, and the whole cement
whereby the race of mankind is kept together; yea, of such virtue and efficacy that, I say, the whole progeny of Adam
would very suddenly perish without it. Therefore, perhaps, I do not think amiss, when I repute it to be the great soul
of the universe, which, according to the opinion of the Academics, vivifieth all manner of things. In confirmation
whereof, that you may the better believe it to be so, represent unto yourself, without any prejudicacy of spirit, in a
clear and serene fancy, the idea and form of some other world than this; take, if you please, and lay hold on the
thirtieth of those which the philosopher Metrodorus did enumerate, wherein it is to be supposed there is no debtor or
creditor, that is to say, a world without debts.

There amongst the planets will be no regular course, all will be in disorder. Jupiter, reckoning himself to be
nothing indebted unto Saturn, will go near to detrude him out of his sphere, and with the Homeric chain will be like to
hang up the intelligences, gods, heavens, demons, heroes, devils, earth and sea, together with the other elements.
Saturn, no doubt, combining with Mars will reduce that so disturbed world into a chaos of confusion.

Mercury then would be no more subjected to the other planets; he would scorn to be any longer their Camillus, as he
was of old termed in the Etrurian tongue. For it is to be imagined that he is no way a debtor to them.

Venus will be no more venerable, because she shall have lent nothing. The moon will remain bloody and obscure. For
to what end should the sun impart unto her any of his light? He owed her nothing. Nor yet will the sun shine upon the
earth, nor the stars send down any good influence, because the terrestrial globe hath desisted from sending up their
wonted nourishment by vapours and exhalations, wherewith Heraclitus said, the Stoics proved, Cicero maintained, they
were cherished and alimented. There would likewise be in such a world no manner of symbolization, alteration, nor
transmutation amongst the elements; for the one will not esteem itself obliged to the other, as having borrowed nothing
at all from it. Earth then will not become water, water will not be changed into air, of air will be made no fire, and
fire will afford no heat unto the earth; the earth will produce nothing but monsters, Titans, giants; no rain will
descend upon it, nor light shine thereon; no wind will blow there, nor will there be in it any summer or harvest.
Lucifer will break loose, and issuing forth of the depth of hell, accompanied with his furies, fiends, and horned
devils, will go about to unnestle and drive out of heaven all the gods, as well of the greater as of the lesser
nations. Such a world without lending will be no better than a dog-kennel, a place of contention and wrangling, more
unruly and irregular than that of the rector of Paris; a devil of an hurlyburly, and more disordered confusion than
that of the plagues of Douay. Men will not then salute one another; it will be but lost labour to expect aid or succour
from any, or to cry fire, water, murder, for none will put to their helping hand. Why? He lent no money, there is
nothing due to him. Nobody is concerned in his burning, in his shipwreck, in his ruin, or in his death; and that
because he hitherto had lent nothing, and would never thereafter have lent anything. In short, Faith, Hope, and Charity
would be quite banished from such a world — for men are born to relieve and assist one another; and in their stead
should succeed and be introduced Defiance, Disdain, and Rancour, with the most execrable troop of all evils, all
imprecations, and all miseries. Whereupon you will think, and that not amiss, that Pandora had there spilt her unlucky
bottle. Men unto men will be wolves, hobthrushers, and goblins (as were Lycaon, Bellerophon, Nebuchodonosor),
plunderers, highway robbers, cutthroats, rapparees, murderers, poisoners, assassinators, lewd, wicked, malevolent,
pernicious haters, set against everybody, like to Ishmael, Metabus, or Timon the Athenian, who for that cause was named
Misanthropos, in such short that it would prove much more easy in nature to have fish entertained in the air and
bullocks fed in the bottom of the ocean, than to support or tolerate a rascally rabble of people that will not lend.
These fellows, I vow, do I hate with a perfect hatred; and if, conform to the pattern of this grievous, peevish, and
perverse world which lendeth nothing, you figure and liken the little world, which is man, you will find in him a
terrible justling coil and clutter. The head will not lend the sight of his eyes to guide the feet and hands; the legs
will refuse to bear up the body; the hands will leave off working any more for the rest of the members; the heart will
be weary of its continual motion for the beating of the pulse, and will no longer lend his assistance; the lungs will
withdraw the use of their bellows; the liver will desist from convoying any more blood through the veins for the good
of the whole; the bladder will not be indebted to the kidneys, so that the urine thereby will be totally stopped. The
brains, in the interim, considering this unnatural course, will fall into a raving dotage, and withhold all feeling
from the sinews and motion from the muscles. Briefly, in such a world without order and array, owing nothing, lending
nothing, and borrowing nothing, you would see a more dangerous conspiration than that which Aesop exposed in his
Apologue. Such a world will perish undoubtedly; and not only perish, but perish very quickly. Were it Aesculapius
himself, his body would immediately rot, and the chafing soul, full of indignation, take its flight to all the devils
of hell after my money.